Care of Your Chickens

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Feeding:

• Your chickens should have a continous food supply as they like to forage.
• Feed chick starter up to 6 weeks of age.  It should contain the coccidiostat medication to help with prevention of coccidiosis, some chick starters don’t have it.  You can check the label to verify.
• After 6 weeks of age, pullet grower crumbles until 16 weeks of age or read the label on the packet
• After pullet grower – change to layer crumbles. Pellets are too big for most silkies to eat. Larger breeds are OK with pellets.
• At all times: vegetable scraps daily
• Plenty of clean water changed once daily and container scrubbed regularly.  Keeping more than one water dish is a good idea to ensure your chickens always have access to clean water.

Foods to avoid:

• Don’t feed any food with mould on it.  It will give the chickens the runs and they could die from it.  This includes vegetable scraps, bread, cheese, or mushrooms which are a fungus.  You can give them fresh bread, but if you have a surplus of bread,  dry out bread in the sun until rock hard before giving It to your chickens.  This ensures that mould cannot develop.
• The following foods are advised to be toxic to chickens: avocado or avocado skin; banana skin.
• Of course, don’t allow your chickens to forage under an Oleander tree!

General Chicken Health:

Dust Bath

Chickens should have access to a dust bath as it help them stay free of mites and parasites.  The dust bath can be as simple as a patch of ground where they can dig their own hole and sit and fluff their feathers around in it.
A good mix for a dust bath is half burnt wood ash, mixed with half brickies sand.

Worms and Parasites Prevention

A good prevention for worms and parasites is garlic cloves in the drinking water for 24 hours.  Allow 1 clove per chicken.  This is best done at a full moon when worms and parasites are most active.  Follow the next day with apple cider vinegar in the drinking water for 24 hours.  The best apple cider vinegar is that purchased from a produce shop.

Apple cider vinegar use 1 cup to two litres of water should do it.  Change the water after 24 hours and put garlic in the water. One clove per chicken but if you have too many chickens just put in as much as you can.
leave the garlic in for 24 hours then replace the water with fresh water.
Do this every full moon when worms and parasites are most active for best results.

 

Further Help

If you have any questions at all about your chickens you can always visit the discussion forum at chooknet.com.au where many helpful chicken owners will be happy to answer your questions.